A promising debut with some snappy dialogue and delicious innuendo. Unfortunately, the rest is a little nanna for me.
This review is part of the Australian Women Writers Challenge. Click here for a list of books I’ve read so far.
Vera is recovering from a long bout of illness and is preparing to take her first leap away from her comfort zone by going to Spain when she is invited to exhibit her work in a gallery owned by her late mentor’s brother, Leeson (‘He has a Wikipedia entry and everything.’). Leeson is attracted to Vera, and he knows she won’t just go to bed with anyone, but he refuses to commit to a relationship due to personal issues he’s been harbouring since he was a kid. Vera has trust and self-esteem issues of her own, but eventually, she agrees to a fling and revels in how Leeson makes her feel—normal.
Australian author Madeline Ash’s debut shows promise. The dialogue between Vera and Leeson is snappy, modern and full of delicious innuendo. Their flirtation is subtle, wonderful and thrilling. Unfortunately, there’s a disconnect between the dialogue and the narrative, which has a more old-fashioned tone to it.
To be frank, it was a little nanna for me. This feeling is exacerbated by having a 25-year old virgin heroine who is not only an artist but an artist with no business sense whatsoever. (She prices her work according to her intuition about the buyer’s love for the work.) This character is a little too 80s for me, and I’m not sure if peasant skirts are mentioned, but if not, then I certainly imagined her wearing them.
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A sweet romance with a delightful banter between the main characters, let down somewhat by the inability to fully explore their emotional conflicts.
This review is part of the Australian Women Writers Challenge. Click here for a list of books I’ve read so far.
Still reeling from her father’s death, Cora is determined to find The One by Christmas. Her downstairs neighbour, Matt, is disbelieving and then amused at her determination to nab herself the right man. From staging car trouble, to internet dating, to chatting up men at juice bars, basketball games, meat markets and trams, Cora is undeterred in her quest. Too bad Matt isn’t in the running, though, because the more time she spends with Matt, the more Cora wonders if any man will ever measure up to him.
Cora and Matt’s initial meeting starts off a little awkwardly. Elise K. Ackers tries just a little too hard to simulate instant chemistry between the two characters, and the humour is somewhat forced. But as the story settles into its own, Cora and Matt fall into a charming rhythm:
When Matt opened his front door and feigned surprise to see her, it made her laugh. And she enjoyed his expression when he noticed the notepad, Ugg boots, old tracksuit pants and beanie.
‘They’re the worst pyjamas ever,’ he declared.
‘These are my relationship pyjamas.’
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Despite the weak romance and a family conflict that remains unresolved, there are enough interesting characters and situations to make this book an engaging, if not altogether satisfying, read.
This review is part of the Australian Women Writers Challenge. Click here for a list of books I’ve read so far.
Wendy Hopkins arrives at the Pilbara in search of her biological father and some self-redemption after a bad decision in her previous job resulted in disastrous consequences. But being the safety manager at an iron ore wharf comes with a load of politics, an overdose of testosterone and, with cyclone season approaching, more danger than she bargains for.*
When a stranger, who ‘brought the same visual pop to her eyeballs that Brad Pitt brought to the big screen’, follows her while jogging, she punches him in the jaw. In return, he steals a kiss. The stranger turns out to be Gavin Jones, piling engineer and infamous womaniser, and it also turns out that he may have the information Wendy is looking for.
It must be a sign of how starved I am for Australian-set romances featuring authentic sounding Australian characters that I found it difficult to put this book down, despite the lacklustre character arcs and romance plot. I might have skimmed through some of the descriptions of working procedures at the wharf, but I was always drawn back by the dialogue. Where else, for example, would you find a simile like this: ’…when he came in here last week he was looking at you like you were a bowl of hot wedges served with sour cream and sweet chilli sauce.’
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Just the right combination of humour, mayhem and sweetness to appeal to a broad audience. Whether or not it will work for romance readers remains to be seen.
I have a special spot for romantic fiction from Text Publishing. This is the publisher who introduced me to Krissy Kneen and Toni Jordan, so when I heard about The Rosie Project, I couldn’t wait to read it. This book has received some pretty spectacular attention, garnering local awards and becoming the Aussie darling of the Frankfurt Book Fair when Text sold it to 30 different territories.
I admit to some ambivalence towards the book’s success. It’s fabulous to have an Australian author do so well, particularly for a locally set book in a genre that so rarely gets accolades from the literary establishment. But this is a romance written by a man, featuring a male protagonist, written in the first person, ostensibly in a genre that generally prides itself for being written by women for women. I don’t have anything against male romance—in fact, this type of book is right up my alley—but part of me resents that this type of a romance novel is marketed to be somehow more worthy of merit and attention, without the stigma of genre, than the novels regularly published under romance imprints.
That aside, there’s no denying that this is a well-written book with just the right amount of humour, mayhem and sweetness to be enjoyable as well as satisfying. Genetics professor Don Tillman is an unconventional hero—meticulous, efficient, intelligent and socially inept. His only friends, married couple Gene and Claudia, who also provide therapy in an unofficial capacity, have attempted to help him but with dismal results.
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A beautifully written, subtle, angsty story by one of the best writers of modern category romance. My first keeper for 2013.
This review is part of the Australian Women Writers Challenge. Click here for a list of books I’ve read so far.
Evie Jones and her business partner, Max, need additional funding for a project that could make their careers. When they attempt to enter a marriage of convenience in order to gain access to Max’s trust fund, they’re faced with a very big inconvenience—Max’s brother and Evie’s ex-lover. Eleven years ago, Evie and Logan had a week-long affair that ended in heartbreak. The sex was too rough, she was too inexperienced, and they were both too consumed by passion to take care of themselves and each other.
There’s no denying the chemistry that still exists between Evie and Logan. Logan wants nothing to do with her—his memory of their affair is steeped in shame and self-loathing. Evie knows that they’re different people now. She’s had eleven years to come to terms with the affair, and to understand her needs and boundaries. Evie is convinced there could be a way for them to find happiness together, but to do that she will have to convince Logan to give their relationship another chance.
This book, one of the launch titles for Harlequin’s new KISS line, is my first keeper for the year.
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This novella has all the elements I love in Hunter’s writing. I would have preferred a longer story…but I say that about all her books, too.
This review is part of the Australian Women Writers Challenge. Click here for a list of books I’ve read so far.
Determined to raise her 11-year old son Cal ‘somewhere peaceful and perfect and full of possibilities’, Billie Temple has given up her life in Sydney to run the local pub of a small country town. Unfortunately, when Billie and Cal arrive at their rental cottage, landlord Adam Kincaid makes it clear that he expects them to find alternative lodgings asap.
Wish was originally a self-published novella by Aussie author Kelly Hunter and was re-released in August 2012 as one of the launch titles for Penguin’s Destiny imprint. Romance novellas are always tricky things—the length tends to demand a very tightly controlled pace and intense character development with little room for a fully fledged backstory.
For the most part, Hunter rises to the occasion admirably.
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A slow-paced, almost old-fashioned story with a conventional romance set against somewhat unconventional circumstances. This isn’t your ordinary secret baby story.
This review is part of the AWW2012 Reading and Reviewing Challenge. Click here for a list of books I’ve read so far.
I seem to be on a category romance reading kick lately, and for some reason I’ve been picking up the sweeter lines. Award-winning Australian romance novelist Barbara Hannay’s story about a heroine agreeing to be a surrogate mum to twin babies caught my eye, primarily because ever since I had twins, I’ve been very interested in the way twin pregnancy and birth are represented in romance fiction.
Ever since Mattie Carey was dumped via text message by her long-distance fiance, she hasn’t had any meaningful relationships with men. So when her best friend, Gina, loses her ability to carry a baby, Mattie offers to be a surrogate. To prevent awkward questions in her small country town, Mattie goes to stay in Gina’s brother Will’s apartment in Sydney, but when she gets there she finds a temporary guest already there. Jake, Will’s best friend, is on a short break from work as a environmental scientist with a mining company in Mongolia.
Although Mattie tries to keep her distance from Jake, he’s pretty hot, not to mention a decent person, and they end up sleeping with each other on his last night in Sydney. They keep in touch via email until one day Mattie stops replying, and the first chance he gets Jake pays her a visit to make sure she’s okay. What he discovers is that she’s pregnant.
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A quick Christmas read that pushes all the right buttons and won’t leave you looking puffy and red-eyed on the train.
This review is part of the AWW2012 Reading and Reviewing Challenge. Click here for a list of books I’ve read so far.
When Dean Hall agreed to help his best friend Talli Jarmen with a photography gig, no one said anything about wearing tights. And when Talli sees Dean in a ridiculously skimpy (read: several sizes too small) elf costume, she notices parts of him that she hadn’t really noticed before.
When certain lines are crossed between friends, there’s just no going back, and Dean knows he has to make a move and risk their friendship. Talli, too, feels a new sizzle between them and has to decide between keeping the status quo or going for broke.
Australian author Rhian Cahill does what she can with the limited word count—my ereader showed 66 ‘pages’, although the story only took 40 and the rest were excerpts from other Escape titles—and Christmas Wishes is a fun read even if it doesn’t quite get to the emotional highs and lows that I love in my romance.
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Keeper. New auto-buy author. Need I say more?
This review is part of the AWW2012 Reading and Reviewing Challenge. Click here for a list of books I’ve read so far.
Most of the books I read nowadays are romance, so it’s not often that I find a one that makes me feel like I’m reading something new in the genre. Until a book like Grease Monkey Jive reminds me that, yes, this genre is more than capable of surprising me in all the right ways.
Grease Monkey Jive opens with ballroom dancing instructor and performer Alex Gibson having a bit of a moment with dance partner Dan Maddox, and as I read the first chapter, I settled down for a lovely, comfortable read. Little did I know.
It turns out that this is only a teaser, and the story flashes back to introduce the characters and the plot. We see Dan and his mates—Mitch, Fluke and Ant—going through a typical Friday night, drinking at a club and picking up chicks. Dan is the babe magnet who leaves with the most beautiful woman but is hard-pressed to remember her name the morning after. It’s an aimless existence, and he begins to question if there’s more to life than picking up random girls, surfing with his best mates and working at McMurty’s garage—particularly when he finds himself in strife after making out with Fluke’s younger sister.
Meanwhile, Alex decides to enter the Australasian Dance Theatre Championship, despite feeling resistance from her mother and her boyfriend, in part because she loves to dance but also because she could really do with the prize money. Due to what she perceives to be her mother’s issues relating to having been a single mum, Alex feels pressure to put away her dancing shoes to pursue a career in business and settle down with her stable and financially secure boyfriend.
It takes a while for Alex and Dan’s stories to converge and come back to where it began in the book, but it’s a fabulous journey—more so Dan’s than Alex’s, to be honest. Although the supporting characters around Alex sometimes surprised me, Alex herself rarely did; her issues are familiar in the world of romance. In contrast, Australian author Ainslie Paton displays an affinity for Dan’s voice and Dan’s world that had me completely wrapped up in his story.
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If characters recovering from cancer aren’t a trigger for you, then this is an enjoyable romance with a slow build and a lot of lovely moments in between.
This review is part of the AWW2012 Reading and Reviewing Challenge. Click here for a list of books I’ve read so far.
It’s rare to find a story where the heroine looking at herself in the mirror and describing what she looks like actually has a purpose. (I know you’re already thinking of ditching this post after that, but stay with me.) Blair Macintyre is recovering from breast cancer treatment and she’s sick of people treating her as, well, the poor woman with breast cancer. Her strategy: bluffing.
One of Blair’s key strategies is to look normal—thus, the need to spend time in front of the mirror, applying make-up, putting on false eyelashes, and ensuring her wig is on properly:
She pulled the wig on over her scalp, tugged it into place, and then turned back to the mirror to make whatever adjustments were necessary. Adjustments that would help her look normal. Adjustments that would help her look whole and healthy. Adjustments that would hopefully ensure people started treating her like a fully functioning adult again.
The scenes with the mirror serve a double purpose, because by turning away from it as she puts on her prosthesis, Blair shows that she doesn’t actually feel normal and whole.
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